Gustafson
HELENA, Mont. - Ski resorts in Montana have all sorts of duties, including installing flashing lights on snow-grooming equipment and pads on metal hydrants. But there is no duty to catch skiers who lose control and plunge over the side of a trail.
That’s the conclusion of the Montana Supreme Court, upholding the dismissal of a lawsuit by Mark Mullee, a self-described expert skier who sued Whitefish Mountain Resort after he skied off a beginner run, down an embankment and into some rocks. Mullee claimed Whitefish had a duty to maintain a snow fence to catch skiers before they left the trail.
Mullee was up against long odds against winning money from the ski area. First, the Montana Skier Responsibility Act sharply limits the liability of ski resorts in order to protect the industry against ruinous losses.
Second, Mullee had been skiing at Whitefish since the 1970s and had skied past the turn where he fell many times. In fact he testified he could “always remember” the fence being there, until he fell in January 2019.
Whitefish Mountain argued the fence was still there, until Mullee skied through it and tore it down. Mullee argued the opposite. But it didn’t matter, since the MSRA places the responsibility on skiers to ski within their limits and remain under control.
Mullee’s lawyer - Ian Gillespie of Driggs, Bills & Day - argued there were too many factual disputes to dismiss the case on summary judgment. The Montana Supreme Court disagreed.
“These factual disputes could only be material for purposes of defeating a summary judgment motion if WSI owed Mullee a legal duty to maintain a fence which would catch him at the spot of his accident,” wrote Justice Ingrid Gustafson in a June 3 opinion. “Mullee had plenty of warning as he had skied the trail over a hundred times previously.”
The court said there was “simply no evidentiary support” behind Mullee’s claim the embankment was any more dangerous than the countless other hazards at the ski area.
“In addition, removing such dangers from the mountain would greatly diminish the public’s interest in skiing,” the court concluded.
